As the fear of global warming increases day by day and as documented by the world's scientific community, immediate action must be taken to reduce CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere on a global scale. In this regard, CO2 emissions come from a variety of sources on the planet and reducing this gas is paramount in slowing and stopping global warming.
A variety of existing systems have been developed to capture CO2 at the source of CO2 emissions, such as at the exhaust towers of electric power plants. For example, some systems include scrubbing gasses containing carbon dioxide with an aqueous solution of sodium hydroxide to react the carbon dioxide to form a first aqueous solution containing sodium carbonate, and then separating the anhydrous sodium carbonate from the first aqueous solution. Then, the anhydrous sodium carbonate is treated by causticization to generate carbon dioxide and sodium hydroxide. Other systems use a vacuum chamber for a direct air capture by enclosing an interior space with a housing that has an absorber therein. Gas can be circulated through a vacuum chamber and past the absorber structure to absorb CO2.
However, these devices focus on large scale industrial applications, are expensive and may have their own respective adverse environmental impacts. They are not suitable to low air volume and low flows that capture carbon in the home or smaller scale settings.
Thus, systems and methods that capture CO2 in a form that can be stored, processed, and/or converted to usable products is desirable. In particular, desirable systems capture CO2 using small scale, individual devices at a vast number of locations which, in the aggregate, are capable of significantly decreasing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere on a global scale.